Victor Manuel left yesterday. Towards the evening the boys went hunting again, as they do every few days.

The hunting gang

They mounted their motorbikes with huge rifles on their shoulders and rode off to get some meat for the family. It’s been week and a half now that we’ve been here and yesterday was the first time they actually brought back a deer. It wasn’t very big especially when they tell you that it was going to be divided among 8 hunters’ families. The rule is, though, that the lucky shooter gets the biggest portion of it. It was Enrique who’d shot it and so they got a whole hind leg, liver, the head and loads of other delicacies. We had some for dinner that night and it was delicious. For Nadya it was the first time that she’d ever eaten venison, which she found very tasty. I haven’t had venison for years, and yes, I can’t but agree with my wife’s taste.

We ate that deer for the next three days in different forms, of course. The following day we had a bit of the hind leg and the head. Nothing is wasted here. They offered us to try the eye and we did – both of us. It doesn’t really taste any different from the rest of it but the consistency is very unusual. It’s very gelatinous but I also thought that it tasted like the cartilage. After that we were offered tortillas with the brains. When we finished all the meat that you can find on a head (surprisingly a lot) Wilbeth split the scull in two and took out the brains. They spread them on a tortilla and eat it with a chilly habañero. The taste is very unusual. It’s sort of like pate but a bit watery. It wasn’t bad but I wouldn’t call it a delicacy.

I tried to listen to the news but the signal was not so good so I gave up. We’re almost finished the hammock.

We woke up early today and continued weaving right after breakfast. We really want to get it over with. It’s been 9 days now, much longer than we originally expected it to be. In the morning Nadya wanted to take some pictures of the whole family.

The Poot family and Nadya in their celebratory dress

The ladies grabbed this opportunity and dressed her up in their celebratory dress. The closthes are not much of a design but the embroidery is fantastic. We asked Doña Modesta how long it took her to make it. The reply was 3 full months. Wow. That’s a lot of work for one dress. We took several pictures but the father was missing ‘cause the was in Tizimin doing some shopping. In the afternoon they invited Nadya to help them prepare some tamales.

making tamales

I’d helped them to cut off a few banana leaves. It took them about 4 hours. In the meantime, I was working on our hammock. When they finished and had them all wrapped in the banana leaves, they put them in a hole outside their house with hot ashes underneath.

Tamales are ready to be smoked

Finally, it was covered with a huge flat piece of metal. We had to wait for at least an hour, I guess more. Few hours after that Angel come over to our house to tell me that I should go over to their house and light a candle for my granddad. I had told them about him on the 1stNovember, the day of the dead. It´s been a while since he passed away. I don´t think about him as often as I should but I do miss him a lot. I´d love to talk to him and tell him all about me and think him for the way he brought me up and for who I am now. In my family, they say I´ve got a lot from him. I´m not sure whether that´s good or bad but I´m glad that he at least partly lives on through me. Hope he´s been watching me all this time and he knows all that is going on around here. I did go over and lit a candle. A bit later they lit 3 more for their deceased, I suppose. This was the sign that we could start eating. All the men did so with great appetite while the women were praying in the room with the candles.

tamales are ready to be wrapped in a banana leaf

Yeah, they put a piece of habañeros in each of the tamales and I must have picked the one with the most spicy bit ‘cause for a while I could barely breath, that’s how hot it was. I had a few more but none of them was anywhere near the one that almost killed me. J

In the evening, I had a brilliant idea. J I climbed onto the roof of our house and I got a really good signal on our digital short wave radio. I listened to the world news in Russian and then also in English. I sat up there for almost an hour. It was great to hear what’s going on in the world, even though there’s very little positive news these days. I spent most of the day standing weaving the hammock and towards the evening my legs were killing me. I can’t wait till we finish it and I’m gonna have the first swing in it. It’s almost 9 and Nadya is still weaving.

Yesterday we had a very unfortunate day. Nadya woke up felling unwell. She had a headache, temperature and diarrhoea. In the evening I gave her some paracetamol and she felt slightly better in the morning but then it came back again and wouldn’t go away until three days later when our hosts gave her some stomach pills. It must have been some kind of local stomach infection.

7/11

Victor Manuel came yesterday. Armando rode his motorbike to Tizimin to pick him up. They came back at 9 pm and brought some beer. First beer in a week 🙂 Victor also brought a lot of food with him. This is just a guess but it seems to me that he is the only one who works in their family. The other three brothers and the father spent their days in the hammocks in front of TV or chatting. They do literally nothing. We’re a little bit surprised at how they can just bum about all day long when there’s so much that could be improved in and around the house. Today we played football again as we do every other day or so and at the end of the game Victor bought a bottle of Coke for all the boys to share. When they finished their drinks the other boys just dropped their plastic glasses wherever they were standing. Victor scolded them for not taking them to a bin and made them pick the glasses up. Nadya is still unwell. It’s not as bad as it was but if she doesn’t feel better tomorrow we’ll have to go and see a doctor in a nearby village. Yesterday, we found an Iguana stuck in our bathroom. It must have got scared of either of us and crawled inside one of the cement blocks. I tried to pull it out ‘cause I can still see the tail and half of the body. No luck though. Not sure what to do about it. If we can’t get it out it’ll probably die of starvation. We continue making our hammock but it’s growing really slow. We don’t do much work in a day. It’s mainly because there are so many other tasks that need to be done. Last two days I spent most of the time cleaning our bikes. They needed it badly and since I haven’t had much practice at it so far it takes me really long time.

We woke up to a cloudy day. Right after breakfast Doña Modesta showed us how to start a hammock and the rist of the nine patterns that we later learnt – Maya style. She set up the frame inside their house and so we spent almost the whole day with her and the rest of the family. First days it was all about getting to know each other. I’m sure we were the first gringos (white people) ever in their village and they weren’t sure what to think of us. The easiest to make friends with was Angel. We gave them the photo of us with Victor Manuel we’d taken back at Tumbem Kuxtal.Come to think of it, this was probably the first step to make them feel more at ease. Later on that day, we showed them the wallets and earrings and because they seemed to like them a lot we let them choose a pair of earrings and a wallet. Our bikes, wallets and earrings gave other villagers and excuse to come and have a look at us. We’ve had quite a few visitors wanting to see the things. In the evening we moved the frame into our house and continued weaving until midnight.

working on our hammock

These people sem to be really poor even though they have a satellite TV and two motorbikes. Despite all that they don’t have mosquito nets on windows or doors.

Nadya posing under our mosquito net

The thing is that if we close the windows and the doors it becomes unbearably hot and if we leave them open there all sorts of creepy crawlies inside the house. Luckily, we’ve got our own mosquito net that we hang over our bed and thus sleep more or less undisturbed the whole night. First few nights I was wearing long trousers and a long sleeve T-shirt to protect myself from these little Mexican blood suckers but then I gave up – just too hot and sticky. Yesterday, I realized that if I wear thick socks, they try to bite me considerably less. It looks like the areas around angles and fet are their favourit spots. I guess evolution has played its role here. They know that it’s the hardest place to reach them at and so they only bite down there. We arrived here on the 30th October which was only two days before the day of the dead (Dia de Muertos). In the evening of 31st we were invited to Poot’s family house to attend some kind of religious ceremony. About 10 women and a bunch of kids gathered in their house to read som prayers. Two girls had some book, on of them must have been the Holy Bible, and when they read a sentence or two the rest of them woud either repeat or say some Catholic formula. It was very similar to what happens during a mass in a Catholich church except that they did this in almost every house in the villagfe. After hatat Doña Modesta gave out caramel with grated coconut sweets that I’d seen Don Victor making few hours ago.

On our third day they finally opened up , let us see the whole house and what’s more invited us to lunch and dinner. Their house consists of two rooms and the kitchen. At the back. One room has a double bed two hammock and the TV in it. The other room looks more like a shed with three hammock hanging across the entire rooms This is the boys’ room. There’s one cupboard and a hi-fi system. The kitchen is built of wooden stakes dug into the ground in a circular shape.

Our hosts´ kitchen

There lots of pans and other random things hanging around . There is a small table in the middle and an open fire place where Doña Modesta cooks all their food. The main component of their diet are tortillas. Tortilla is a thin unleavened pancake made from cornmeal.

tortillas baking

They also make a lot of soups. So far we’ve had a chilli soup, bean soup and letils soup. They seem to eat a lot of eggs, too. Even though they have some hens at home they don’t produce any eggs and thus they have to buy them all the time. Couple of days ago Doña Modesta made a swet pumpkin. Around here, they have these small pumpkins that she put in boiling water along with honey. It was a real delicious desert.

Few random things: I gave Angel a quick English lesson and Nadya told them that she is a hairdresser. Angel was the bravest one and asked for a haircut straight away. The whole family came out of the house to look at the process. He seemed to be happy with the result and we arranged that Enrique will get his tomorrow. After him, Diana also wanted to have her hair cut. Nadya cut it short, just above her shoulders. One thing I noticed here is that they don’t express their feelings that much. Except for Angel none of them said whether they liked their new haircuts or not. However, they laugh a lot. Whenever they dine you hear them talking about something and every few minutes burst into a laugh. The only place that I can compare it too is my aunt Dasha’s family. It was in the past though. Now they don’t do it anymore.

We woke up at 6 but couldn’t leave until our tent dried up. It hadn´t rained but the morning dew had done exactly the same damage. 30 km later we arrived in Loche, a village on the road to Rio Lagartos and the place where we had to take a right turn and get off the main road. Cycling was very hard because of the wind blowing from the sea which we’re getting closer and closer to.As we were riding I noticed a huge area of formerly jungle that was being cleared up for a future papaya plantation (Papaya is a fruit).

future papaya plantation

In Loche, we decided to take a break and get something in our stomachs. There was a restaurant right on the side of the main road but we rode inside the village instead and eventually found some people who were able to make some quesadillas for us. It was kind of fruit and veggie shop. There we also met Raquel and her friend, two girls who suggested that we go have a look at an old church i. They said it was 300-400 years old and build by the Spanish.

Old church in Loche

Right next to the church there was a small hill which turned out to be the remnants of some Maya ruins. Later on, Raquel showed us her Eng-Spanish dictionary and explained that she’d bought it there in Loche. She showed us the place and we got one too. Stupidly, because we wanted to reduce the weight of it we tore out Spanish-English half of it. She also wanted to take us to a cenote few km away but we really needed to go in order to get to Xkalax before it gets dark. In the end it was another 30 km with the last seven on a dirt road. On the way there we had to stop twice and tie up our under tent sheet between our bikes to hide from rain. It’s good that we have it J. When we finally got to to Xkalax we asked around for the Poot family and just before it got dark parked outside their house. First one to come out and say hello was Victor’s father – Don Victor. One by one the whole family came out- the mother – Doña Modesta, three brothers Enrique, Armando, Wilbeth, the sister – Diana and a small boy – Angel – the son of the oldest daughter Alicia. She works on a ranch some 50 km from here so Angel leaves here with his grandparents and only sees his parents at the weekends. We were shown into the neighbouring house and given a 15 litre bottle of drinking water. Our house or pretty much any other house in the village is a simple cement block house of a rectangular shape.

The house in Xkalax we lived in for 2 weeks

There’s only one room with a double bed (some people don’t even have that) and several hooks on the walls for hammock. There’s very little furniture here. The same evening some boys asked me to play football with them. It was a good game.

I´m sitting at a Pemex petrol station near Tizimin. We are very tired today. Nadya’s already sleeping and I want to do so too but it’s been 3 days since I wrote anything.

Let’s start where we left of. We woke up in Chemax at 7 feeling quite refreshed. After two hours of packing we were cycling again. Just before we left we had had a quick peek at the local church. It’s quite big but unlike in Europe very simple. 30km to Valladolid took us just under 2 hours. We arrived at the city center and crashed on one of the benches in the park.

relaxing at a bench in Valladolid

After a couple of hours of surfing the internet we bought some tamales for lunch. Tamales are boiled or steamed cornmeal filled with chicken or pork usually wrapped in a banana leaf. They were very tasty. We were about to leave what place when the rain finally caught up with us. It’s been cloudy for the past 3 days. We quickly found a shelter in one of the hotels driveways. It wasn’t just rain, it poured like hell. We stayed put for 2 hours and decided to spend the night there. There are 2 hostels in Valladolid. They are both close to the centre. Unfortunately one of them was completely full and the other one had only one private room for 290 $MXN. It’s way over what we can afford to pay for a night but we didn’t really have any choice. Having paid we moved into a very simple room with a bathroom and surprise, surprise, hot water / first time in more than a month. We spent the evening typing our diary and making some more wallets.

We woke up around 9 and very quickly understood that it was gonna be a very hot day. The price we paid last night included breakfast. I got a bit upset and had a go at the hostel guy for not being able to provide cornflakes with milk even thought it explicitly said that we can choose out of 2 options. The other option was toast with butter and jam plus coffee. I shouldn´t have. If he ever reads this I apologize. We were almost ready to leave when I decided to call my grandmother and we ended up talking to her for almost an hour. It was scorching when we left the place to check out Cenote Zaci which is located right in the town. We didn’t expect what we found. It was a huge cave with a decent size pond in the middle and some stalactites hanging of the top.

Cenote Zaci

We went straight down and into the water. It was refreshingly cold and we spent a whole hour there.

taking a waterfall shower at Cenote Zaci

After that we moved back up and into a nearby restaurant to have some lunch. Two chicken soups and enchiladas did it. 3 hours later we were pedaling again. We only had 2/3 hours of day light left so we dconcluded that spending the night at Ek Balam would be our best bet. Ek Balam is only about 30 km outside of Valladolid and off the main road a bit . We got there at about 5 and luckily found some people even though it closes at 4. About 2 km further into the jungle is another Cenote Xcanche.

Cenote Xcanche at Ek´Balam

Of course, we went we went for a swim straight away. It is huge as well and has a lot of catfish in it. We slept in hammock in a palapa along with some guys, who work around the cenote.

Palapa at Cenote Xcanche

Sleeping in a hammock can be very comfortable if you know how to do it. You need to sleep crossways. It was already dark when we finished cooking our dinner. We have a Primus omnifuel cooking stove which save us quite a bit of money and provides us with hot dinners mainly.

The following day, we started with a morning dip in the cenote and left before 9. Ek Balam ruins are just two km back and after we 89 pesos each for the ticket and went for wander around our first ancient Maya sites.

Ek Balam - view from the top

Our bikes and belongings were left with local rickshaw drivers. The ruins are quite impressive, several big stone pyramids as you might have seen in pictures or on TV. We walked around for about an hour and a half and climbed the highest pyramid which gave us a great view of the whole archeological site.

artistic photo of Ek´Balam

The Sun was high and burning as we cycled off. We decided to take a shortcut through the village of Ek Balam but it turned out to be a dead end and we had to cycle about 5 km back to Ek Balam ruins and then onto the main road. We stopped at Calotmul and entered a local bar which had very loud reggaeton music on. It was full of men drinking beer. We were invited to have one, too. And we did. Beer was the only thing on the drink list; however, they had two different brands Sol and Superior. They don’t do draft beer in Mexico so the place was full of 1 litre glass bottles. The guys were all curious about our bikes and our journey. Some of them wanted to dance with Nadya but she declined their invitations. They were obviously all a bit inebriated. Even though we offered to pay, they refused and so we left a little tipsy and onto to the scorching Sun again. We got to Tizimin an hour later totally exhausted. After filling up our food supplies we rode off to find a place to camp. Right after the town there’s a gas station and we were cheeky enough to filter some water here. They kindly allowed us to use it and later even camp on their grounds. It’s close to people and we have plenty of light as it is open 24/7. I’ve been writing for almost 2 hours now. I need to go to bed or I’ll fall asleep here. Asta mañana.

We were still in Tulum this morning. 7 o’clock alarm was supposed to give us plenty of time to pack and get going before the Sun starts burning. As usual it took us 2 and a half hours but thanks to the forecast hurricane Rina the Sun was merciful today. It was almost non-existent, which makes cycling much easier and pleasant. We rode past Tulum ruins and after a quick pros&cons enumeration (not sure if this is how you say it in English) we decided to skip it to make most of what we had left of that day. Having grabbed some food supplies at the local supemarket we rode inland. Nadya seemed to be tired and so was I at the beginning. As we were slowly crawling along the road, we saw a group of people looking at a big road sign. When we got there it turned out to be Demid and Sasha – the guys from Cancun who hosted us three weeks ago. They were on an excursion with some Russian tourists. The thing they were all staring at was a huge snake hanging off the road sign.

Someone must have put it there either for the tourist to admire or as a warning for other big snakes :).Then I woke up and was kind of anxious about not being able to ride at my own pace. Towards the noon I couldn’t hold it back anymore and left Nadya far behind. Not that much actually – about 1-1.5 km. The road was ascending a little bit and it made her even slower. I parked on top of the hill and waited for her to catch up. She arrived all in tears and utterly frustrated claiming that she can’t do it anymore. After half an hour brake she calmed down and we moved on. She wouldn’t talk to me, though, unti the evening when we arrived in Chemax. We passed Coba and again I was contemplating whether to go and see the ruins. We skipped those too. There’s plenty of them along the road. After Coba there was a 30 km stretch of the road with seemingly no end to it. It was completely straight and you just couldn´t see where the end is. We finally reached Chemax at around 4 pm. At first it looked like a tiny village but it turned out to be a small town with a town centre, a big church and very kind polece officers. At ¨the restaurant¨ (understand a local kind of Burger King) we were told to ask about camping at the Palace Municipial.

Backyard of the police station in Chemax

Eventually, we ended up talking to the police an they offered us their backyard to set up our tent. Their backyard is a multi-functional area, which serves as their parking lot, a football stadium for local chicos (boys) and a dancing school. Also, there was some kind of jail at the back of their office. We’ve heard a man shouting something and then two girls (presumably his daughters) turned up to feed him. An hour later they (the police guys) brought him a companion. He was obviously drunk but after an hour of shouting he must have fallen asleep ’cause we never heard him again. Anyway, I think we were really lucky ’cause they even have a shower here. We cooked our dinner – rice with scrambled eggs and a fried banana (platano- different kind of banana) and are ready to go to bed. As always our bikes interest people a lot and the whole police station came out to look at them. We had to answer a lot of questions but the most frequent one is how much they cost. Our Spanish is getting better every day. I can now ask about so many different things and even though I don’t usually understand much of what they reply, I get the idea. They speak very fast for me but knowing English helps a lot.

We´re heading to Tizimin and particularly Kalax – Victor’s parents village. I don’t think we’ll be able to make it tomorrow though. Our bikes are really heavy and I guess we’re gonna have to do something about it. Buenos Noches.

On Saturday 14/11 we had a big dinner with Carlos and some other friends. There was 9 of us and Carlos spent half a day cooking.

cooking dinner at Tumbem Kuxtal

What I forgot to mention is that from 12-15 (Thursday to Sunday) we had 4 days of more or less solid rain. We stayed put at the farm and never got round to going scuba diving. Couple of days ago we found out that Victor’s parents make hammocks and with our limited Spanish we asked for a permission to visit his little village and learn how to make them. After several messages Victor Sorted it out and on Wednesday morning we hit the road again.

Destination is Tulum – another cool town on the Caribbean coast. After about 70 km we stopped at a small village called Akumal where you can, if you’re lucky swim (see) with wild sea turtles.I guess I was lucky ’cause the moment I dipped my head under the surface there was a turtle swimming away from me. It was a big one too. When I later told people that I actually saw one, everyone said I’d been very lucky. After that Nadya and I saw several different fish, some of them only about a meter off the shore. Akumal has a beautiful bveach with a lot of palm trees which make it look like a real paradise. But then wherever we go here looks like a paradise for us :)))). We got there at about 4:30 pm and because it gets dark in this part of the world around 6:30-7:00 pm, we were on the lookout for a camping spot. Unfortunately, Ukumal beach area is all privately owned plus it’s a really hip place with a lot of tourists, so camping is sort of frowned upon. We were directed towards Tulum. There was supposed to be a place just 10 km after Akumal but we never saw the place and ended up cycling all the way to Tulum. In the meantime it got really dark and we were really tired. Cycling in the dark is not the smartest thing you can do and we’re gonna try to avoid it, if possible. After an arduous search for a camping place we found one, cooked a quick dinner and went straight to bed. We did 99.7 km that day and it was our first day of riding. Crazy.

The place is called Playa Esperanza and it’s 80$MX per person per night. It’s right on the beach. and you hear the sea all day long. First thing we did in the morning is a jog along the beach followed by a swim. Another paradise :))))

At first we thought we were gonna stay for a day or two and rush up to Victor’s parents’ place but just couldn’t do it and lingered for a whole week. The place has some kind of magic. There have been a lot of people who get stuck there for months. We’ve also met some. Jon from Honduras has been living there for the past 3 months, an Italian Alex for 5 months, and another Italian Eugenio for 4 months. This where we started making our wallets I’d mentioned before to improve our financial situation. On Thursday, we cycled around the town and asked at several different restaurants to keep their empty milk boxes until tomorrow for us to collect. We also make felt earings and two Argentinian artesanos Simon and Cecilia taught us many new things about handcrafts. BIG THANKS. From Thursday to Sunday there’s a crafts market on the main square and we decided to try our luck. We only went on Friday and Saturday but we sold 10 wallets which brought us 300 pesos. Not bad, hmmm? What helps us a lot are our bikes. They attract a lot of attention and once people come to look at them we show them what we do and most of them do buy a wallet or two. I guess some of them do it out of compassion for two weary travellers but whatever their reasons are, it’s good with us.

Couple of days ago, I got a request on Couchsurfing (CS) from Pedro (Costa Rica) to travel together. He’s just returned from a one year trip in the Balkans and former Soviet Union countries. I emailed him back telling him all about our bikes and I suggested to meet up for a drink in Tulum. I never got the chance to read his reply because the next day he turned up at Playa Esperanza as if we’d agreed to meet there. Nadya needs visa to Costa Rica so meeting Pedro was a great thing since we hope he’ll be able to help us with the visa. On the other hand, he’s planning to start learning Russian as soon as he gets back to his home country so by the time we get there, he should be able to practise his Russian with us. Plus, if he ever wants to visit Russia we’ll do the same visa favour for him.

In the middle of nowhere, that’s where we are.been here for a week and a half. Learning how to make real Maya hammocks. Still Mexico Yucatan state. Mid December. It’s hard to plan so we don’t or very vaguely. Anyway will post all my photos and writings as soon as we get out of here.

The alarm went off very early today – 6.15. It´s our day off and we´d planned our first trip in the area around Puerto Morelos (PM). As usual, we set off quite late, around 8.15. The destination is our first cenote. Jose Luis, the guy we met yesterday at our favourite cafe in PM, told us about La Ruta De Los Cenotes and singled out one that is particularly beautiful. Siete Bocas or Seven Mouths. After about 6 km on thehighway towards PM, we crossedit and rode out onto La Ruta De Los Cenotes. It was a very pleasant ride. The road is straight and stretches out without any visible end to it. After about 2 km we came across the first of the many restaurants along the road. Only few of them seemed to be open though. The first cenote was right next to the road. We stopped to have a look but it was neither big nor very clean. So a little unimpressed we moved on. Having passed several cenote signs, we stubbornly continued until we arrived at a big sign saying Siete Bocas. We were directed inside the jungle and after about 3 km and several uncertain turns there we were – another one of so numerous ranchos in Quintana Roo state of Mexico. Few minutes later, having paid M$100 (Mexican pesos) we were let to the cenote itself. Gosh, it was stunning. Can you imagine big stony holes in the ground, caves in fact, with crystal clear water about 4-5 mts below? Well, that´s exactly what it looks like. When the Sun beams hit the water, even from the top you can see the walls, amazing shapes and colours several metres deep under water. We jumped in. The water was refreshingly chilly and it was even more beautiful. 7 Bocas are in fact 7 singholes all connected together and you can easily swim from one to another through narrow tunnels in some areas with only about 30 cm of space beetween the surface of water and the ceiling of the cave. They are very popular snorkelling spots. No surprise there though. We borrowed some goggles and explored firther down. The sunlight makes it on unforgettable experience. Believe it or not. / Bocas is 150 mts deep and even though we only saw a fraction of it, we were stupefied by all that beauty underneath.

Several hours later we mounted our bikes again and set off back for lunch and a swim in PM. The Sun was scorching and my cyclocomputer showed 37 degrees Celsius. Jose Luiz also recommended a cheap restaurant where they serve fresh fish so we decided to give it a go. We ordered whole fried fish of enormus sizes. Man, it was delicious. I can honestly say that I´d never ever had such tasty fish before. We were a little worried about the bill but when it arrived we just laughed since you would pay about three times more anywhere else I know about. After that we relocated to a nice spot on the beach and went for a dip in the ever warm Caribbean sea. The day finished in our favourite cafe on the main square. We met this guy Jim, an American, who currently lives in PM and is a professional writer and he invited us for a cup of coffee at the hotel that he temporarily runs here. I guess we´ll give it a go some time soon